June 6 (Bloomberg) -- What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas -- especially when you can’t remember what you did there.

That’s the predicament faced by three hapless groomsmen in “The Hangover,” a riotously funny film about the aftermath of a rowdy bachelor party in Sin City. The revelers wake up in a trashed luxury-hotel suite with a smoldering chair, champagne bottles aligned like bowling pins, a growling tiger in the bathroom and a crying baby in the closet. And, by the way, the groom is missing.

The threesome (Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis) have no idea what happened to them or their AWOL friend, who is due at the altar the following day. Their attempts to retrace their steps, find the groom (Justin Bartha) and make it back to Los Angeles in time for the wedding are like a Raymond Chandler detective story rewritten by Mel Brooks.

This is a gross-out comedy with brains, a suspenseful caper with belly laughs. There may be a funnier movie this summer, but I doubt it.

The film was written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, who gave us the mediocre “Four Christmases” and the horrendous “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past,” so I have to assume that director Todd Phillips, whose “Old School” made Will Ferrell a movie star, played a major role in shaping the story.

Tyson Sings

The reverse structure, starting with the night-after scene in the hotel room and working backward in time to solve the puzzle, allows the details of the bacchanalian adventure to emerge bit by hilarious bit. It gradually turns into a bizarre tale involving a quickie wedding to a stripper, a stolen police car, a stun-gun demonstration, an effeminate Asian kidnapper and Mike Tyson air drumming and singing Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight.”

While Tyson’s cameo may be the most talked-about scene, red-bearded Galifianakis dominates the picture as the groom’s clueless future brother-in-law -- a guy who thinks Caesars Palace was the home of the Roman leader and nibbles on stale pizza he picks from a sofa cushion.

Galifianakis is a cross between Andy Kaufman and Steven Wright, a conceptual comic seemingly from another planet. Watch for him coming down a casino escalator in a brief “Rain Man” parody.

The movie lags in the middle and some characters are overdone, particularly the vengeful kidnapper Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong). On the whole, though, “The Hangover” is as much fun as a Vegas blowout -- and easier to remember.

“The Hangover,” from Warner Bros. Pictures, is playing across the U.S. Rating: ***1/2

‘Land of the Lost’

I support recycling, with one exception: turning old TV series into movies. The latest case in point is Brad Silberling’s “Land of the Lost,” an alleged comedy starring Will Ferrell as a goofy paleontologist who gets sucked into a time portal where dinosaurs coexist with cigarette lighters and airplanes crash into Viking ships.

Almost all the recent movies based on TV shows from the 1960s and ‘70s have been disastrous -- and this is no exception. When the highlight is a couple of mock interviews by Matt Lauer, you should think about going straight to DVD.

Ferrell has a few funny moments, but not nearly enough to save a film that’s more lost than its characters, who include a sexy British researcher (Anna Friel) and a redneck con man (Danny McBride). The sets look like they were made in arts-and- crafts class, and the special effects are barely an advance from the TV series, which went off the air in 1976.

“Land of the Lost,” from Universal Pictures, is playing across the U.S. Rating: *

‘My Life in Ruins’

Nia Vardalos, who became an overnight star in the indie hit “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” revisits the Greek theme in “My Life in Ruins.” If the first movie was the equivalent of mouthwatering souvlaki, this one is a stale gyro.

Vardalos plays a Greek-American history professor who, in an attempt to spice up her drab life and connect to her roots, becomes a guide for a motley group of tourists in the land of Plato, Aristotle and Alexander the Great.

The cliched gathering -- including a wise-cracking American (Richard Dreyfuss), beer-swilling Australians, stodgy Brits and hotblooded Spanish senoritas -- are more interested in buying tacky trinkets than communing with antiquity. They resist the guide’s efforts to force feed them culture, but eventually grow fond of her. Then the guide finds love with a bus driver named Poupi (Alexis Georgoulis) and I almost gagged on my popcorn.

“My Life in Ruins,” from Fox Searchlight Pictures, is playing across the U.S. Rating: *1/2

What the Stars Mean:

****          Excellent
***           Good
**            Average
*             Poor
(No stars)    Worthless

(Rick Warner is the movie critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on the story: Rick Warner in New York at rwarner1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: June 6, 2009 00:01 EDT